CAMBODIA: Understanding nation building
July 2, 2013
I owe this
article to a number of Cambodian participants at the May 18
Cambodian Leadership Conference (CLC) in Tacoma, Washington,
where I gave a keynote address on Building Leadership for
Young Khmers, and two lecture-discussion sessions on
political socialization and political culture. After the
day-long conference, participants raised the subject of
nation-building to discuss with me this topic, which they
saw as a natural follow up to the day's activities.
I was
enthused about their interest, but felt somewhat
hard-pressed to engage a topic to which, as a professor, I
would allot no less than a semester of classes and
discussions. I told them a few things about nation-building
and state-building, subjects that piqued their interest.
When one participant pushed for my return to Tacoma for
further conversation, the leader of the Cambodian Women
Networking Association, sponsor of the CLC, said decisively
the CWNA would shoulder the project.
I suggested I would
write an article on nation-building, a term I said I prefer
over state-building. Nation conventionally refers to the
people and their culture; state, to a geographical entity
and physical structures and institutions – though both are
intertwined and the terms used interchangeably. The Tacoma
folks were satisfied for the time being.
I am conscious of
the push-button era of instant gratification. Patience may
be a Buddhist strong suit, but many Cambodians wanted to
develop leadership quality traits and leadership skills
overnight just as they want quick results in nation-building
– a process that requires a long time to yield results.
Too many do not have the patience for long-term
projects.
Definition and conceptualization
I
subscribe to the concept of nation-building as a process –
a series of changes and actions that are evolutionary. Its
ultimate goal is to keep people in a unified country that
functions amid peace and stability in the present and in the
future. Nation-building focuses on the nation; nation refers
to a group or a race of people who embrace the same history,
traditions, culture.
Parallel with the leadership building
process I presented in Tacoma, the nation-building process I
am presenting here involves the maintenance and
strengthening of the values, beliefs, behaviors, life-ways,
the touchstones that illustrate a people's history and
culture in order to safeguard the nation's present and
insure its future in independence and security. I embrace
the concept of nation-building as an indigenous process
comprising national leadership and a national vision – an
"endogenous" school of thought. I see it as providing a more
solid foundation for state-building.
Khmers are a race
with a history that dates back to an era before Christ.
Khmer values, beliefs, behaviors, life-ways have evolved
through animism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and their great
historical monuments of Angkor illustrate Khmers' past
grandeur.
The world never stands still. Change is a
constant. But Khmer values such as korup (respect),
kaowd-klach (admiration and fear), smoh trang
(loyalty), bamreur (serve), karpier (defend)
have remained unchanged for hundreds of years. Even today
the Khmer pledge their loyalty to individuals – political
leaders and others – mortals who, as they die, leave their
followers scrambling to cement new allegiances. The
traditional Khmer belief that the mystical Preah Batr
Thoarmmoek will come to the rescue remains alive. The
old Khmer way dubbed M'neus kbal khsear or individual
with head of a smoker's pipe continues to be practiced
today: The face carved on the pipe bowls smiles in all
circumstances. The smoker forces tobacco into the hole on
the carved pipe bowl, the face still smiles. The smoker
stirs the tobacco ash with a metal tool, removes the ash by
hitting the carved bowl against a hard surface. The face
still smiles. That was how Khmers stayed alive in perilous
times.
These ancient ways, though revered, must in this
21st century be put in perspective much as the Greeks
cherish their mythologies but operate in a modern society.
It is essential that our values be re-oriented from the
mystical and folkloric to focus instead on ideas (drop by
drop fills the tub), ideals (the self-evident truths),
principles (freedom, justice, rule of law). For Khmers,
nation-building is the "re-building" of their national and
cultural identities through change to insure the Khmer
Nation lives on into the future.
In our ever changing
world of interdependence, economic development and stiff
competition, nation-building has become used interchangeably
with state-building, which focuses on the systemic –
institutions and infrastructure. I see a successful
nation-building process as a prelude to state-building,
through which the nation's beliefs and values are codified
and formalized into a governmental structure.
However,
today state-building has taken on a new meaning. It is an
interventionist action by foreign actors in building or
rebuilding the institutions and infrastructures of a weaker
state, or a "failed" or "failing" state – an "exogenous"
school of thought – which some writers see as tainted with
colonialist and imperialist connotations. Thus,
state-building becomes "the use of the armed force in the
aftermath of a conflict to underpin an enduring transition
to democracy" (James Dobbins, RAND Review, 2003), involving
"massive investment, military occupation, transitional
government..."
University of Hawaii Professor Carolyn
Stephenson described nation-building programs in Nation
Building (2005) as "those in which dysfunctional or
unstable or 'failed states' or economies are given
assistance in the development of governmental
infrastructures, civil society, dispute resolution
mechanisms, as well as economic assistance, in order to
increase stability. Nation-building generally assumes that
someone or something is doing the building
intentionally."
For Cambodians, the 1991 Paris Peace
Agreements on Cambodia, and all that the agreements entail,
is what state-building is about – an "exogenous"
approach.
A "multi-faceted process"
Perhaps the
best definition of nation-building is Professor Stephenson's
"multi-faceted process" – a mixture of nation-building and
state-building – as follows:
"Nation-building that will
be likely to contribute to stable international peace will
need to emphasize the democratic participation of people
within the nation to demand rights. It will need to build
the society, economy, and polity which will meet the basic
needs of the people, so that they are not driven by poverty,
inequality, unemployment, on the one hand, or by the desire
to compete for resources and power either internally or in
the international system. This does mean not only producing
the formal institutions of democracy, but the underlying
culture which recognizes respect for the identities and
needs of others both within and outside. It means
development of human rights – political, civil, economic
and social, and the rule of law. But it also means
development of sewer systems, and roads, and jobs. Perhaps
most important, it means the development of education.
Nation-building must allow the participation of civil
society, and develop democratic state institutions that
promote welfare. Democratic state-building is an important
part of that. This is a multi-faceted process that will
proceed differently in each local context."
Framework
for Cambodia's nation-building
Conforming to my CLC
speech advocating development of productive high quality
thinking and encouraging listeners not just to walk the talk
but to think smart and act smart, I propose to apply to
Cambodia's nation-building process Professor Michael G.
Roskin's framework for nation-building that requires
countries to go through the same five stages – decision
points – in the same sequence as below. They may look
simple, but each stage requires considerable knowledge and
understanding, and all five stages are interrelated and
provide a formidable vision of nation-building.
1.
Identity: People must think of themselves first and
foremost as citizens of the nation; original identification
with a tribe, region, or subnational group must
cease.
2. Legitimacy: A government becomes
legitimate and its rule becomes rightful when its citizens
respect it, obey its laws and commands, and keep it in
power.
3. Penetration: A government must reach out
to all people everywhere on the land and get them to follow
and obey its laws and commands.
4. Participation:
People need to participate, or have a say, in the affairs of
the state and in their government.
5. Distribution:
Who gets what, when, how.
What the framework instructs
is that the people on Khmer territory in the Khmer state
must think of themselves first and foremost as citizens of
Cambodia, and must stop identifying themselves primarily
with their ethnic origins (Vietnamese, Chinese, Cham,
Indian, French, American, and so forth) or with their
countries of origin: All are Cambodian citizens (and all are
ruled by the supreme law of the land, the Constitution of
Cambodia). The principle of inclusiveness yields unity and
harmony. Unfortunately for Cambodia, many Cambodians are
influenced by exclusivity, a characteristic that needs to
change.
In a democracy, citizens govern. They govern the
country through a government they put in power through free
and fair elections to rule on their behalf. The citizens
decide to keep, or not to keep the government in power. The
Khmer word Pracheathippatei comprises Prachea,
people, and thippatei, supreme. Greek
Demokratia comes from Demos, people, and
kratia, government. The people put a government in
power, respect it, obey its laws and commands – which
emanate from them. When citizens give the right to the
government to rule, the government becomes legitimate and
its rule becomes rightful.
To attain this objective, the
government must reach out to all citizens everywhere in the
territory, persuade them to respect, obey, and agree to keep
it in power, through meeting the people's basic needs and
satisfying their need to have a say in the affairs of their
country and in their government.
Cambodia is far from
being a democracy. In 1993, current Prime Minister Hun Sen
and his Cambodian People's Party lost the first and only
UN-supervised free and fair elections to Prince Ranariddh
and his royalist party. But Hun Sen threatened war unless he
was allowed to share power. Ranariddh's father, then Prince
Sihanouk, came up with the world's only political formula to
split the prime ministership into two: Prince Ranariddh, the
winner, as First Prime Minister; Hun Sen, the loser, was
made Second Prime Minister; a government with two
heads.
In 1997, Hun Sen pulled a coup d'etat against
Prince Ranariddh, and took full power in Cambodia. Today,
one month before the July 28 election Hun Sen warned of
civil war should Cambodian voters not vote to keep the CPP
in power.
In the final stage of nation-building, the
country's system of allocation and distribution of goods,
services, resources, values, honors, benefits to society
determines who gets what, when, how, as prescribed by the
Constitution. In Cambodia, the government controls politics,
the economy, the military. Her national wealth is plundered
by the elites and sold to foreigners. Cambodia's economic
land concessions cause citizens to be evicted, their homes
dismantled, replaced by resorts and high-rises. While the
rich get richer, some 30 percent of the people live below
the poverty line. This is nation-building a la Hun
Sen-CPP.
Concluding remarks
In summary,
nation-building requires people's participation to demand
rights, opportunities, and proper treatment; the building of
a society, an economy, and a polity to meet the basic needs
of the people; the building of formal institutions of
democracy; the establishment of a culture that respects
others' identities and needs; the development of political,
civil, economic, social rights and the rule of law.
Nation-building requires people to be educated about their
rights and their responsibilities, as well as the rights and
responsibilities of their government. Education is of
highest priority.
On July 28, Cambodian voters have a
chance to re-elect a government to continue the status quo
or elect a new government to bring change as democrats
promised. Unfortunately, Hun Sen's threat of warfare should
voters not put it back in power assures that voters will not
vote their conscience. Meanwhile the world community
watches.
This article fulfills my debt to the CLC
participants. But it also provides Cambodians with topics
for discussions as they decide their future.
*************
Dr.
Gaffar Peang-Meth is retired from the University of Guam,
where he taught political science for 13 years. He currently
lives in the United States.
The AHRC is not responsible
for the views shared in this article, which do not
necessarily reflect its own.
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